348Chapter 18
for family planning. Knowledge about female means of
control, such as douching, also began to circulate in
that period.
Abortion was also used to terminate unwanted
pregnancies during the Old Regime. A Christian tradi-
tion received from Aristotle and passed onward by Ro-
man law held that a soul was implanted in the fetus at
the time of “animation” or “the quickening.” Though all
abortions were illegal, both moral law and criminal law
distinguished between those before and after “ensoul-
ment.” The means of attempting abortions were crude
and dangerous. Folk knowledge circulated about sup-
posed abortifacient drugs and vegetal or mineral poi-
sons, however, and the learned reference work of the
century, the French Encyclopédie, discussed them in
detail.
The Life Cycle: Old Age
Statistical averages showing the low life expectancies of
the Old Regime should not produce the mistaken con-
clusion that older people were rare in the eighteenth
century. Twenty percent of all newborns reached the
age of fifty, and 10 percent lived until seventy. French
demographic studies have found that, in the 1740s, 17
percent of men and 19 percent of women would reach
age sixty; by the 1770s, this had risen to 24 percent for
men and 25 percent for women. The aged clearly rep-
resented a significant group in society. Once someone
had survived to the age of fifty, his life expectancy was
not greatly different than it would be in the twentieth
century.
Thus, a large proportion of the powerful and fa-
mous individuals who are remembered from the eigh-
teenth century had life spans typical of twentieth-
century leaders. King Louis XIV of France lived to be
seventy-seven (1638–1715); his successor, Louis XV,
died at sixty-four (1710–74). The three Hanoverian
kings of eighteenth-century England (George I, George
II, and George III) died at an average age of seventy-
five (sixty-seven, seventy-seven, and eighty-two, re-
spectively). Empress Catherine II of Russia and King
Frederick II of Prussia earned their appellation, “the
Great,” partly because they lived long enough to
achieve greatness—Catherine died at sixty-seven, Fred-
erick at seventy-four. And the eight popes of the eigh-
teenth century, who were typically elected at an
advanced age, died at an average age of nearly seventy-
eight; four lived into their eighties. Similar life spans
characterized many of the famous cultural figures of the
Old Regime. Christopher Wren and Anton van
Leeuwenhoek both lived into their nineties; Goethe,
Goya, Kant, and Newton all lived into their eighties.Percentage of Percentage of
premarital illegitimate
Country Period conceptions births
England pre–1750 19.7 2.6
1780–1820 34.5 5.9
France pre–1750 6.2 2.9
1780–1820 13.7 4.7
German pre–1750 13.8 2.5
states 1780–1820 23.8 11.9
Spain pre–1750 n.a. 5.4
1780–1820 n.a. 6.5
United States 1940 n.a. 3.5
1990 n.a. 28.0
Sources: Data for the Old Regime from Michael W. Flinn, The European Demographic System, 1500–1820(Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971),
p. 82; data for the United States from Information Please Almanac Atlas and Yearbook 1989(Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1989), p. 788 and 1994,
p. 844.TABLE 18.6Premarital Conception and Illegitimate Birth in the Old Regime